Cook your food in water instead of over a fire during a survival situation for the most nutrition

Bradical - May 18, 2022

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When you need to cook something you have caught, hunted, or foraged, cooking it as a soup in a pot of boiling water is much more nutritionally efficient versus grilling it over an open flame.

By containing the food in the pot, all of the nutrients are infused into the surrounding water which can later be drank as broth. That’s why chicken noodle soup was a common “cure” to being sick, because back in the day the whole chicken was cooked into the soup and the bones, joints, and skin would be broken down into a very nutritionally dense broth. The can of Campbells chicken noodle soup from the store in 2022 does not provide the same benefit.

It’s also easier to make sure that the food is cooked thoroughly if it has been boiling in a pot of water for some time. You can’t burn and char it in water but that can happen over an open flame.

A grilled piece of meat will always taste so much better, but in a survival situation you want the most nutrition as possible in soup form.

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I couldn’t agree more.  Because of this, I have some very large pots plus have a very large cast iron cauldron for making soup in a crisis.  In the depression they called it hobo stew, where you threw whatever food you could gather into a pot of boiling water.  With meat you would throw in pretty much the whole critter.

 

A large pot would be a great neighborhood prep to set up some sort of community soup kitchen after a disaster.

Have you made soup in your cast iron before? I’ve heard that it is not recommended to make very watery soups, stews, or even boiling beans because the amount of boiling water will cause the seasoning to flake off and get your food all black. Not sure I believe in that because that was the go to method of cooking such meals 200 years ago.

 

I haven’t used the cast iron kettle.  I just keep it in storage for just in case.  I think the primary use for it would be for boiling large amounts of water, maybe for cleaning.

For cooking for a group, I have an Instove 60 liter rocket stove.  It is now discontinued but it was specifically designed to feed large groups in 3rd world countries, where fuel is scarce.  I actually have several rocket stoves, but this is by far the largest.  It is very cool, I think.

 

Most rocket stoves I have seen just concentrate the flame on the underside of the pan like on a stovetop. The efficient design that I liked on yours is the heat is channeled up along the sides of the pot as well. 

 

Yes, the design helps to provide uniform heat.  Cool thing is it is designed so that my All American pressure canner fits perfectly in the opening.

 

The seasoning won’t come off, only if you scrub the pot. There is a way to properly clean cast iron. The gypsies never washed their pot, just kept adding food and water, sometimes for years.

 

I noticed when we started watching the survival game show Alone that the people who boiled their game or seafood never seemed to get sick but several times people who ate grilled meat got very sick, like often enough I pointed it out to my husband.

 

I noticed that as well, it cooks out all the nasty stuff more thoroughly than just grilling. Are you excited for Season 9? It starts this next week on May 26!

Also, here’s a roundup of the gear that was used by the winners and runner ups.

 

Bradical, where did you find that large pot in your first photo?

 

Sorry but those aren’t my pictures and are just stock images I pulled off a Google search.

It looks to be just a 2 quart camp pot though. Maybe something like this:

 

Gary Paulson actually addresses this in his novels.

 

I’ve read Hatchet but not any of his other ones. Do you recommend them?